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This weekly blog is to explore the larger issues around Digital Health, data security, data privacy, AI / ML. technology, social media and related matters.
I will also try to highlight ADHA Propaganda when I come upon it.
Just so we keep count, the latest Notes from the ADHA Board are dated 6 December, 2018! Secrecy unconstrained! This is really the behaviour of a federal public agency gone rogue – and it just goes on! When you read this it will be over 16 months of radio silence, and worse, while the CEO, COO and the Chief of Staff have gone, still no change. I wonder will things improve at some point, given the acting CEO seems not to care, as well. I think it is fair to assume no change will come in the foreseeable future.
Note: Appearance here is not to suggest I see any credibility or value in what follows. I will leave it to the reader to decide what is worthwhile and what is not! The point is to let people know what is being said / published that I have come upon.
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My Health Record for Specialist Practice Staff
GCPHN co-hosted events ADHA Propaganda
01 Apr
Start Time & Date: |
01/04/2020, 6:00 pm
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End Time & Date: |
01/04/2020, 8:30 pm
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Location: |
John Flynn Private Hospital, Inland Drive, Tugun QLD, Australia
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Registrations from 6.00pm
An evening to provide the latest information, dispel the myths and answer your questions
Please join us to hear new information, discuss ideas and meet new colleagues
An opportunity to hear the latest updates on the National Digital Health Strategy including My Health Record. 90% of Australians now have a My Health Record and Specialist Practices are now invited to learn more about the system and registration process.
Topics
- How GCPHN can support your practice
- My Health Record: the benefits for Specialist Practices, registration, privacy, security & provider obligations
- Australia’s Digital Health Strategy – latest updates
- How to effectively use the Provider Portal to view patient information for more timely and better coordination of care
Guest Speaker
Ben Cohn – Education and support Lead at Australian Digital Health Agency
This event is fully funded and is no cost to participants. Dinner will also be provided by John Flynn Private Hospital.
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My Health Record ADHA Propaganda
In 2019 every Australian (unless they opted out) received a My Health Record.
My Health Record is a secure online summary of an individual's health information. This means your important health information is available when and where it’s needed, including in an emergency.
All Australians can access their own record and control how information is accessible and viewable in order to safeguard their privacy. Find out more about how you can get the most out of your My Health Record.
NT Aboriginal language tools
We recently commissioned the development of a series of stories that explain My Health Record in a range of Aboriginal languages spoken throughout the NT.
The videos were produced in partnership with italk Studios, the Australian Digital Health Agency, AMSANT and the NT Aboriginal Interpreter Service.
To access all the language groups, view the playlist.
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https://www.digitalhealth.gov.au/news-and-events/news/national-digital-health-strategy-march-updates
National Digital Health Strategy March updates
04 March 2020: The Service Registration Assistant and the Child Digital Health Record proof of concept are coming soon.
Service Registration Assistant (SRA)
The new Service Registration Assistant – now in the evaluation phase – can reduce paperwork, keep healthcare practice details accurate and improve patient outcomes and experiences. It offers immediate benefits for healthcare organisations by reducing the burden of needing to complete the same details across many different forms.
The Service Registration Assistant supports an integrated experience through clinical information systems that use the FHIR API or through the SRA portal for non-integrated users.
The SRA has two key roles. Namely:
- Publisher (organisation who wishes to share their details)
- Subscriber (external service or directory who wishes to receive publisher details)
Production use began in late 2019 and completion of the release will incorporate features required for the proof of concept. The participants and the current update of their involvement includes:
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Australia's surveillance laws are hitting the social license problem
Can lawmakers continue to ignore the well-founded criticisms of the ever-increasing powers given to law enforcement and intelligence agencies? Can agencies continue to be so secretive?
Australia's cops and spooks want to increase the time for which telcos must retain customer communications data from the current minimum of two years to as much as seven years. But should they get what they want?
In last Friday's hearing of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS), agencies were hit with this question of social license.
Will citizens continue to accept that the powers being granted are appropriate given the trade-offs and risks involved?
As noted when PJCIS savaged the Department of Home Affairs, mandatory data retention was sold on the basis of a strictly limited number of agencies fighting the worst crimes of all -- terrorism, child abuse, and transnational organised criminals.
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Time for the digital behemoths to pay for news content
ADAM SUCKLING
The recent announcement that Australian Associated Press will close is not only terrible news for AAP journalists, credible news reporting and transparency, it is also a strong example of what happens when digital platforms take too much of the value of journalists’ work.
AAP provides a vital service, available to us all. It is often invisible to the public, but its value is illustrated by pictures circulating on Twitter, capturing a lone AAP journalist at a press conference.
The stories these journalists produce are packaged up and published across any one of the many news organisations that subscribe to AAP. This symbiotic relationship delivers readers a diverse range of coverage from court cases to sporting events.
AAP chairman Campbell Reid described the service as “journalism’s first responders”. The Guardian called it “Australian democracy’s safety net”. I’d add it is “bloody productive” — last Thursday, AAP’s top 10 news stories were republished more than 2500 times.
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Using My Health Record: Fact sheet for clinical immunology/allergy specialists
5 March 2020: ADHA Propaganda
The Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy (ASCIA) through the National Allergy Strategy is collaborating with the Australian Digital Health Agency to provide information to clinical immunology/allergy specialists about using My Health Record to improve patient care.
This new Fact sheet for clinical immunology/allergy specialists developed by the National Allergy Strategy includes information about:
- what’s in it for you and your patients;
- benefits for clinical immunology/allergy specialists; and
- safety and security of patient information.
Additional resources designed to support your use of My Health Record in clinical practice are being developed as part of this project and will be released once complete.
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Digital health and medico-legal in specialist practice
This workshop will assist you to expand your knowledge of digital health tools and medico-legal obligations in specialist practice. ADHA Propaganda
Learning Outcomes
- streamline business processes and save time while improving continuous care for clients;
- understand practical uses of digital health tools like secure messaging and My Health Record for everyday workflow;
- medico-legal obligations – practical tips for mitigating risk in your practice;
- policies, procedures – things you need to know to manage and mitigate risk;
- social media – your privacy, professional and legal obligations as an entity and an employee.
Topics Presented by
- Australian Digital Health Agency
- Avant Mutual
This event is free to attend with breakfast provided.
Tue 12 May
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e-Scripts project portent of FHIR potential to transform locally
March 4, 2020 Jeremy Knibbs
Electronic only scripts looks like a watershed project for how the government and vendors view FHIR moving forward in Australia
Web sharing resource Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource (FHIR) shares many political characteristics in Australia with the climate change debate. It’s a bit of an inconvenient truth that sooner or later you sense will catch up with the federal government and local vendors because it’s an increasingly obvious answer to so many issues of complexity in sharing health care data, especially with consumers.
Whereas the standard has been recognised for its potential in the US and parts of Europe, and pushed to the forefront of efforts to open up health data sharing, especially with consumers, Australia has somewhat stubbornly resisted FHIR’s attraction as a fast developing universal go between on data trapped in vendor legacy systems and within other more complex standards structures such as HL-7 and CDA.
Until now, Australia has had a firmly ‘steady as she goes’ approach to the standard – not ignoring it for sure, but not recognising it and pushing it properly either .
This is in part because its underlying utility transgresses most of what we’ve placed most of our Federal government digital bets and money on, in the centralised command and control structure and platform of the My Health Record project, and in part, and perhaps more pragmatically, because the local vendor market has invested so much so recently in other expensive and complex technologies, that changing too quickly could prove commercially fatal for some companies.
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Top 10 digital healthcare platforms: Telstra Health, No 5
March 4, 2020
Telstra Health, once had the grand ambition to be ‘the’ Australian digital health platform. And then things went a bit awry. Now the group is stable, growing and winning interesting national digital health contracts. do they still have the potential to realise this ambition?
When the idea of Telstra Health was first mooted within the senior management bowels of Telstra more than 8 years ago now, it was a reasonably grand vision. Telstra’s most successful CEO to date, David Thodey, was riding a wave of revenue growth at the Telco based on the roll out of broadband and mobile networks, and was on the right side of a deal with the government to keep the old twisted copper wire network up and running alongside the roll out of what was originally meant to be a to-the-home full fibre network, in the NBN.
But Thodey understood well that the Telco’s time on such lush revenue growth was on a clock that was eventually going to run down as competition heated up in the broadband and mobile market, as the NBN eventually came on line (luckily for Telstra the original vision was never realised), and as the government forced more regulation around their still dominant market position.
He and his senior managers, with cash to spare, were thinking in the manner of “moon shots” (a term used largely around companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon to describe huge and risky bets on future technologies like self driving cars, and AI) . Their plan was to buy into and test big vertical markets that had the most potential to synergise with Telstra’s trajectory on engaging its customer base from their mobile and broadband offerings, all the way into the transactional cloud. Healthcare was one of a few identified areas of very high potential.
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Russian accounts meddling in US election harder to detect
By Amamda Seitz
March 6, 2020 — 6.55am
Four years after Russia-linked groups stoked divisions in the US presidential election on social media platforms, a new report shows that Moscow's campaign hasn't let up and has become harder to detect.
The report from University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Young Mie Kim found that Russia-linked social media accounts are posting about the same divisive issues - race relations, gun laws and immigration - as they did in 2016, when the Kremlin polluted American voters' feeds with messages about the presidential election.
Facebook has since removed the accounts.
Since then, however, the Russians have grown better at imitating US campaigns and political fan pages online, said Kim, who analysed thousands of posts.
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6 March 2020
Telehealth ‘has to be done right’ as GPs begin billing for phone calls
An announcement on telehealth items for COVID-19 is expected today, but RACGP president Dr Harry Nespolon says it has to be the right kind of telehealth item if it is to help GPs get through an outbreak.
The federal government announced this morning that it will up its funding contribution to 50% of every COVID-19-related healthcare item inside and outside of hospitals in a new agreement with the states.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Health Minister Greg Hunt told a media conference they were lifting the federal-state hospital funding ratio from 45-55 to 50-50 in a deal that would be “demand-driven” but was estimated to cost the states and commonwealth about $1 billion.
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Author's Opinion
The views in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of iTWire.
Friday, 06 March 2020 08:33
US bid to ban encryption without actually banning it
In Australia, the government is using the increasing incidence of online child sexual exploitation to give the military intelligence agency, the Australian Signals Directorate, a domestic role. It claims this role will be restricted only to cases of child sexual abuse.
In the United States, the same crime is being used to try and push through a bill that will restrict the freedom of Americans to use encryption for their data and communications.
Australia's intentions were made clear on 19 February when Australian Federal Police commissioner Reece Kershaw, Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission chief executive Michael Phelan and Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre chief executive Nicole Rose made presentations at the National Press Club, claiming that current laws had been overtaken by technology and needed to be changed.
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Why we click 'Accept' without reading the terms
Social media users provide the data, but they are not paying customers. So the relationship of platform to user is essentially manipulative.
John Naughton
Mar 6, 2020 — 10.04am
Suppose you walk into a shop and the guard at the entrance records your name. Cameras on the ceiling track your every step in the store, log which items you looked at and which ones you ignored. After a while you notice that an employee is following you around, recording on a clipboard how much time you spend in each aisle. And after you’ve chosen an item and bring it to the cashier, she won’t complete the transaction until you reveal your identity, even if you’re paying cash.
Another scenario: a stranger is standing at the garden gate outside your house. You don’t know him or why he’s there. He could be a plain-clothes police officer, but there’s no way of knowing. He’s there 24/7 and behaves like a real busybody. He stops everybody who visits you and checks their identity. This includes taking their mobile phone and copying all its data on to a device he carries. He does the same for family members as they come and go.
When the postman arrives, this stranger insists on opening your mail, or at any rate on noting down the names and addresses of your correspondents. He logs when you get up, how long it takes you to get dressed, when you have meals, when you leave for work and arrive at the office, when you get home and when you go to bed, as well as what you read. He is able to record all of your phone calls, texts, emails and the phone numbers of those with whom you exchange WhatsApp messages. And when you ask him what he thinks he’s doing, he just stares at you. If pressed, he says that if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear. If really pressed, he may say that everything he does is for the protection of everyone.
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Thursday, 05 March 2020 22:50
New bill will give other countries access to data in Australia
The Federal Government has introduced legislation into parliament to make it possible for foreign countries to access stored or intercepted communications and telecommunications data within Australia, with Australia able to have reciprocal rights.
The bill has technical amendments to ensure local service providers can respond to lawful orders for communications data from other countries with which Australia has an international agreement.
Cabinet minister Alan Tudge, who introduced the bill on Thursday, said it would enable the country to keep up-to-date with modern technology.
"Almost every serious crime and national security threat today has an online element," he said. "As serious criminals and malicious actors adapt to these changes so too must our agencies."
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My Health Record
32 videos 29 views Updated yesterday ADHA Propaganda
A collection of 4 short animated films.
Understanding ‘My Health Record’ has been made by the Northern Territory Public Health Network and italk Studios.
’My Health Record’ is in English and the Indigenous languages of Arrernte, Kriol, Pitjantjatjara, Tiwi and Warlpiri, Murrinh Patha and Yolngu Matha.
Story 1: What is My Health Record? – overview - Aunty Maisy
Story 2: Benefits of having My Health Record – Uncle Harry
Story 3: Privacy and Managing information on your My Health Record- Joey
Story 4: Getting access to and controlling your own My Health Record
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Apr 22
Health My Way
by Casey Cardinia Libraries ADHA Propaganda
Free
Description
Learn how My Health Record works, the information it contains and how to access these records. Step by step instructions will be given to assist participants to access this information.
Date and Time
Wed, April 22, 2020
3:00 PM – 4:00 PM AEST
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Porn age filter for Australia recommended by parliamentary committee
By technology reporter Ariel Bogle
5 March, 2020
Australians may have to verify they are over 18 before watching porn if an age filter proposal moves ahead.
Key points:
- A House of Representatives committee has recommended a mandatory age filter for online porn
- The eSafety commissioner has been asked to create a roadmap for age checks within 12 months
- A similar proposal in the UK collapsed over concerns a filter could be easily evaded
Parliament's Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs has recommended mandatory age verification be used before viewers can access online pornography and some forms of online gaming.
This follows an inquiry that looked at whether age checks could protect young people from being exposed to forms of disturbing content online.
"The evidence was clear that exposure to online pornography is associated with terrible harms to young people's health, education, relationships, and wellbeing," the committee chair, LNP MP Andrew Wallace, said in a statement.
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Australian government is currently juggling 62 high-cost IT projects
Information revealed to ZDNet under freedom of information has shown all of them are valued at over AU$10 million, and one was contracted to Telstra back in 2013.
There are currently 62 technology projects underway by Australian government entities that are valued at over AU$10 million and loosely under watch by the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA).
The DTA in early 2017 was charged with looking into the structures of existing Australian government high-cost technology projects, but as was revealed during a round of Senate Estimates last year, the DTA's powers only go so far and the best way to avoid scrutiny for a troubled IT project is to ignore phone calls from the DTA, not reply to emails, and bump up self-reported scores.
Documents received by ZDNet under freedom of information (FOI) also revealed the earliest project the DTA is aware of started in April 2013 and has yet to be marked as completed.
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A wary eye on metadata watchers
There’s concern that our data retention law is spiralling out of control and that the privacy of ordinary Australians is being compromised unnecessarily by organisations accessing citizens’ metadata without a warrant.
The law offers bodies investigating individuals a way to monitor terrorists, pedophiles and those committing other serious crimes by requiring telecommunications companies to keep our communications metadata for two years.
This could include metadata about our phone calls — numbers, start and end location of calls for both parties, identity of the mobile base station and call duration — but not the conversation. It could be metadata about emails and text messages — when and to where they were sent and to whom — or the address used when visiting websites.
In 2015 the Coalition and Labor voted for the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Act despite protests and amendments proposed by crossbench senators to safeguard privacy. George Brandis, the attorney-general at the time, said the laws were “measured and proportionate”.
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Wanting privacy doesn’t mean you’re hiding something
LESLEY SEEBECK
Imagine a world in which everything you did was tracked and logged, and your behaviour assessed against a standardised model to detect “deviance”, by an impenetrable government authority.
A world where you may be stopped in the street, your smartphone taken, the low-level encryption that’s allowed is cracked and its content held against you, with any “unauthorised” software leading to fines or imprisonment.
A world where you are allowed to meet friends in an online space only on the condition that an “invisible” participant monitors your meeting, without you being aware of what is reported.
Because in this world, who knows? You may be committing a crime and need to be watched constantly.
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Push for access to tech data on crimes
· Australian Associated Press
The Morrison government is pushing on with legal changes it hopes will give police faster access to data held by tech giants.
It has been pursuing an agreement with the US government to give Australian law enforcement better access to data held by companies in America.
In a step towards finishing the deal, the government has put legislation to parliament on Thursday setting up the reciprocal framework for such requests.
It would allow Australian law enforcement to access intercepted or stored communications and telecommunications data from partner countries to help them investigate and prosecute serious crimes.
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Inquiry wants porn viewers' faces scanned
· Australian Associated Press
A parliamentary inquiry into online age verification has recommended the federal government use face scans and official ID to confirm a person's age.
Committee chair and Liberal MP Andrew Wallace tabled the committee's report in parliament on Thursday, saying it was necessary to protect children from violent pornography and gambling online.
"The committee recognises none of these methods are perfect," the Liberal MP told parliament.
"These methods and others can be mixed or offered as choices to give users the flexibility and reassurance of privacy."
The committee recommended Australia's online safety watchdog develop a road map to verify people's ages online and said third parties should also be allowed to provide verification services.
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'Have a dumb home': The spooks' guide to debugging your life
By Hannah Boland and James Cook
March 5, 2020 — 11.09am
Last year, a family in Seattle grew alarmed when their three-year-old daughter informed them that a voice in her bedroom was saying "I love you".
"We were both downstairs working in our office here, and our daughter called out," the child's mother told King 5, a local news channel. "She's saying, 'Mommy, mommy. The voice is talking to me.'"
The voice wasn't an imaginary friend, but a hacker who had broken into the internet-connected baby monitor in the toddler's room and begun using its speaker to broadcast his own voice.
The incident, and countless other similar hacks, have prompted governments around the world to crack down on cheap smart cameras.
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ASD warned cloud accreditation U-turn jeopardises security, adoption
By Justin Hendry on Mar 5, 2020 6:40AM
Service providers, IT industry body concerned by deregulation.
The abolition of the Australian Signals Directorate’s centralised cloud services certification program (CSCP) has surfaced very real concerns over the future security of government data and the impact on public sector cloud adoption rates.
The policy U-turn was revealed on Monday after an independent review recommended closing the program from July and creating “new co-designed cloud security guidelines with industry”.
The ASD and Digital Transformation Agency are expecting the change to “open up the Australian cloud market” and give agencies a “greater range of secure and cost-effective cloud services”.
But the move to effectively deregulate how cloud services are accredited for government has been met with mixed reaction by cloud providers and the broader IT industry.
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Community Nurses navigating My Health Record: Q&A with Experts
When: Wednesday, April 1, 2020
Time: 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM AEDT
Where: Online - join via your computer!
Your Hosts: Australian Digital Health Agency and the Australian College of Nursing
Time: 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM AEDT
Where: Online - join via your computer!
Your Hosts: Australian Digital Health Agency and the Australian College of Nursing
About the webinar ADHA Propaganda
Close to two billion documents have been uploaded to the national My Health Record system, with more than 100 million uploaded in December alone. With increasing clinical content healthcare providers may have access to more current and up to date information about their patients.
Come and join us for a panel discussion attended by representatives from the Australian College of Nursing, Australian Digital Health Agency and Nurses who have incorporated My Health Record into their daily workflow. There will be opportunity to ask question throughout the session.
This education is CPD accredited and delivered in collaboration between the Australian College of Nursing and the Australian Digital Health Agency.
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Aged care doesn’t have to be a bitter pill to swallow
The fact that Australia’s aged care system is broken cannot be disputed. The horrifying stories that continue to come to light through the Royal Commission hearings show over and over again a system that is completely overwhelmed and under-resourced. This situation will, most certainly, worsen unless we begin to undertake a radically different approach to aged care.
In the wake of the Royal Commission’s interim report, the Federal Government announced an extra half a billion dollars in funding for the sector. But this is a short term solution at best. Australia simply does not have the tax base to continue to support the funding needed to improve aged care facilities to acceptable levels. According to government figures, there are four and a half people under 65 to every person over 65, but that is expected to halve over the next decade. And, even with a surge in Government funding, the situation will worsen as the Baby Boomers continue to move into their retirement years because there simply aren’t enough people to look after them. Not to mention that most of these people will opt to stay in their own homes as long as possible which means they’ll enter aged care facilities as high-need patients.
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How to avoid falling victim to a cyber attack
By Nina Hendy
March 4, 2020 — 12.03am
The big banks are spending millions on technology to help prevent cyber criminals from hacking into your account.
Yet sophisticated cyber attacks are still growing in their scale and complexity at an alarming rate.
Financial services regulator APRA has adopted an "assumed breach mentality", meaning it believes that information security defences will, at some point, be compromised by a cyber attack.
Financial services regulator the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority says the banks reported 77 data breaches in just six months since new regulations enforcing disclosures began last July.
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ANZ tries to defuse screen scraping time bomb
By Julian Bajkowski on Mar 3, 2020 1:47PM
Proposes data access hierarchy based on sensitivity.
The ANZ Banking Group has moved to defuse escalating hostility between the big banks and angry Australian fintechs amid accusations that incumbent institutions are using the issue of customer data security to smother competition by challengers.
As debate continues to rage over whether regulators should ban the increasingly common industry practice of screen scraping to onboard customers, ANZ’s chief data officer Emma Gray has proposed a system of different data sensitivity levels combined with trusted intermediaries to act as data or ‘insight’ brokers.
The proposal from ANZ represents a compromise or ‘third option’ in the row that has played out extensively during the government’s Fintech and Regtech inquiry that has been overrun with submissions.
Breaking the impasse
To date, the debate over screen scraping – which usually involves customers handing over their bank account access details like log-in credentials to external parties to access customer data – has hinged around fintechs going against decades of customer education not to share security credentials.
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Importance of insuring your portfolio against cybercrime
James Gerrard
We all have heard stories about cybercrime. But how many of us have taken any active steps to check how secure our data is when held by the professionals we use, whether it is our dentist, lawyer, accountant or financial adviser?
With physical files a thing of the past, unfortunately, many Australian businesses have a relaxed approach to electronic data security. Dane Meah, CEO of cybersecurity firm InfoTrust, says: “Most businesses have a ‘if something happens, we’ll deal with it’ approach.’’
But the numbers suggest you should seek to cyber insure your portfolio. The Australian Cybersecurity Crime Centre receives one cybercrime report every 10 minutes from individuals and businesses. The most common types reported are identity theft, online fraud, shopping scams, online romance scams and business email compromise.
A common way hackers try to cause financial damage is by impersonating clients. Genene Wilson AFP, financial adviser with Finesse Financial Advisers, says: “I have experienced first-hand an attempted fraud. A number of years ago I received an email request from a client. I was asked to transfer a substantial sum of money offshore urgently as a deposit for a property purchase. I attempted to verify the request by calling the client, unsuccessfully. I contacted the client’s brother (also a client) inquiring about his whereabouts. It was evident from the conversation with the brother that the client was travelling interstate.
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Monday, 02 March 2020 11:42
Data breach report shows Australian businesses 'not learning from abroad'
The latest data breach report from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner shows that Australian businesses have learnt nothing from the devastating impacts of breaches in other countries, a cyber security professional says.
Alex Woerndle, principal adviser, Cyber Security at Ecosystm, said the report was a concerning read as it continued to show Australian businesses were failing to grasp necessary data protection and data management techniques.
"It appears we have learnt nothing locally from scandals and breaches that have seen millions wiped off the value of businesses overseas," Woerndle said. "For a third of all breaches to be attributable to human error is unacceptable.
"All businesses can now understand the damage and disruption simple human error mistakes are causing or could cause if not addressed. In today's world, business requires partnership and co-operation, and leaders need to find the right allies and partners to defend innovation and overcome threats, be they competitive from rivals, internal malicious attacks, or from cyber criminals looking to extort financial gain.”
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Law enforcement gets our information 'within 24 hours'
Mar 2, 2020 — 4.03pm
AUSTRAC chief executive Nicole Rose has defended the intelligence agency’s sense of urgency, telling a Senate hearing its analysts will refer suspicious transactions involving child exploitation to other law enforcement agencies within three to four days – and could move faster given new data analytics capability.
Ms Rose was forced to spend most of the hearing on Monday responding to questions from Labor Senator Louise Pratt, who jumped on weekend reports suggesting AUSTRAC did not have specific protocols in place to prioritise and report suspicious matters to police, and may have delayed reporting to police potential child exploitation using Westpac accounts.
“There are allegations about the level of urgency that you have treated those issues,” Senator Pratt said. But Ms Rose labelled any suggestions AUSTRAC had damaged any child sex abuse investigations as “appalling and abhorrent”, and said all information it gathered from banks and other reporting entities is available to 5000 registered users of its database within one day.
“Our information is available to law enforcement within 24 hours – there is no delay for law enforcement around this country to get access to all of our information,” she said.
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Advertising technology inquiry 'could end suspicion’
Mar 2, 2020 — 12.00am
The chief executives of two of Australia's largest advertising and marketing groups say they have nothing to hide, welcoming the competition regulator's scrutiny of media agencies that control billions of dollars of advertising spending in the industry.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's inquiry will assess if the advertising technology (AdTech) supply chain in Australia is operating competitively; work out where digital ad dollars are going; who is taking a cut and why; and gain more understanding about the relationship dynamics between advertisers, ad agencies and digital platforms such as Facebook and Google.
"We just need to understand what is going on in this market," ACCC chairman Rod Sims said. "And whether this market is working in the interests of publishers and advertisers."
"Firstly, have the publishers and the advertisers got enough information to make informed choices; secondly, where is the money going, how much is going to the advertiser or publishers versus going to people who sit in the middle and take out chunks on the way, and that's just not known; and thirdly, how much competition is there in this market."
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Credit cards, addresses and phone numbers vulnerable: More than one million energy customers’ privacy at risk
By Adele Ferguson and Chris Gillett
March 1, 2020 — 11.58pm
One of Australia’s biggest energy companies has put the privacy of its 1.1 million retail gas and electricity customers at risk due to “reckless” cyber security and data protection systems.
A joint investigation by The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and ABC’s 7.30 reveals that Chinese-owned Alinta Energy may be breaching Australian privacy laws by failing to protect its customers’ personal information.
Through its retail operations, Alinta collects names, addresses, birth dates, mobile numbers, Medicare and passport numbers, credit card details and in some cases individual health information.
A series of internal documents, confidential reports and emails leaked by a whistleblower show that almost three years after then-treasurer Scott Morrison approved the sale of Alinta to Chow Tai Fook on advice from the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB), the company’s privacy systems remain inadequate.
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Friday, 28 February 2020 11:48
ACCC chief raises competition concerns over large digital platform expansions
Competition authorities around the world must work together to meet significant and evolving challenges in global markets - including with the expansion of large digital platforms - and should consider whether traditional approaches to assessing mergers remained fit for purpose, according to Australia’s competition regulator, the ACCC.
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Chair Rod Sims says the meteoric expansion of large digital platforms, much driven by acquisitions, was one of many challenges confronting global competition authorities.
Speaking at a dinner in Melbourne for the International Competition Network’s merger workshop, Sims said, “Recently, competition authorities around the world have been heavily challenged on whether our merger laws, and our application of those laws, is adequately achieving its goals”
“Some argue that high levels of concentration, and the resulting excessive profits, are responsible for reduced investment and innovation, growing inequality and, according to some, an undermining of democracy,” Sims said.
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CCTV footage is being used to study suicide, raising ethical concerns
By technology reporter Ariel Bogle
1st March, 2020
CCTV camera footage could be used for health research, raising difficult ethical questions.
We shed data as we walk through parks and pause on street corners — data that, at first glance, seems to have little to do with our health.
Smartphones communicate with cell towers, every tap on and off the bus is recorded, and our movements are captured by networks of CCTV cameras.
This tangle of information may offer scientists new insights into our wellbeing and state of mind, but are we comfortable being looked at so closely?
Some sites are necessarily more watched than others.
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Comments more than welcome!
David.
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